A banner year for Bleicher & Newton
Happy holidays from your favorite above-average-in-height authors
The final sun-starved days of the year are upon us, and as the world’s foremost authors who know the high harmony parts to a majority of Simon & Garfunkel songs, we were most grateful in 2022 for all of you, our loyal readers, friends, tepid supporters, and pitiful enemies.
This past September, after more than three years of writing, revising, revising, and even more revising, we at last came out with The Carlyles, the follow-up to our 2019 debut novel. It’s an expansive farce and Trump-era satire, loosely inspired in form by the works of Charles Dickens, full of humor, intrigue, and unforgettable characters. We get to see a more fleshed-out version of the fun-house-mirror world of politics and media introduced in From the Campaign Trail or Thereabouts as inept NYT reporter Harold Carlyle attempts to compete with his paper’s star correspondent for White House gossip and he and his wife Pattie become the target of Russian spies.
Many thanks to everyone who has read the book so far. If you haven’t yet, please leave us a review on Amazon and Goodreads, as the algorithms now dictate our cultural tastes. If you haven’t purchased your copy yet, there’s good news—it’s available to order pretty much everywhere books are sold. Here are a couple links for your convenience:
In October, we had the opportunity to do a book signing at Rozzie Bound Co-op, a community-owned bookstore in Roslindale, MA. We moved product and got to know Andy’s neighbors. It was a blast. Rozzie Bound is soon to open a brick-and-mortar location in 2023, so be sure to check it out, if you live in the Boston area.
We also put together a number of book club activities to go along with our novel, including discussion questions, funny story-inspired games, and a soundtrack! If you would like to read The Carlyles in your book club, let us know, and we will gladly Zoom into your meeting to talk and answer questions about our novel. (Or not! Whatever offer sounds more enticing to you!)
Want to hear us talk even more about The Carlyles? Check out this virtual reading we did, hosted by Weekly Humorist’s Marty Dundics.
Holiday Classics
We’d be remiss if we didn’t revisit some of our favorite holiday-inspired satire pieces from years past.
Life After Simon & Garfunkel: Exchanging a Christmas Present
Die-hard Bleicher & Newton fanatics know our obsession with Art Garfunkel goes back many a year. In this piece, Art uses his considerable celebrity to try to return a sweater.
Ivanka Trump’s Reflections on Hanukkah and Flipping on Your Entire Family
While the political relevance of this piece has waned, we nevertheless think this article boasts a few funny gems.
A Note on the Future of Santa’s Workshop
Elves beware, layoffs are coming to the North Pole. Andy wrote this Christmas piece for McSweeney’s back in 2016, inspired by a company-wide email he’d recently received at his then-job.
Other Updates
We now have a storefront on Bookshop, where you can buy our two novels as well as many other books we recommend. Keep checking back as we add more lists of recommendations. Sales from our storefront benefit local bookstores and also us!
We also started a chat thread available only on the Substack app. This is something Substack was pushing, and we’re not sure if we’ll use it. We’ll respond if you chat us, though, probably!